Asterisms
by Okaeri-Kairi
Summary: Most astronomers would agree that adhering to the wisdom in the Astronomer's Handbook is the height of good sense. Unfortunately for Yuuri, he's already broken 3 of the most important rules, and he's considered a madman anyway. He may as well find the bastard who's responsible for all the mishaps in his life, because Yuuri would like nothing more than to punch him in the face.
1. The Astronomer's Apprentice

The death of an astronomer was always a grand, somber event.

It never mattered if the practitioner in question merely oversaw a small country parish or if they were a king's own astronomer; they were all mourned with every bit of pomp and circumstance that could be afforded, and they were always immortalized in The Astronomer's Handbook, which released new published editions each and every time one of them died. The updated versions would include the practitioner's life works, as well as a single piece of wisdom based on the life they had led. This compendium of knowledge was affectionately called "The Astronomers' Last Words" and was widely considered good advice, even if one was not an astronomer themselves.

To date, the "Last Words" included six hundred and eighty seven pieces of advice, one for every single astronomer that had lived and died in the past four hundred years. It was known that astronomers had existed for many centuries before that, but obviously their advice was rubbish and outdated, and no one wanted to read it anyway.

That being said, many of the "Words" were taught to every child before they even learned how to speak, so that it wasn't uncommon for a proud parent to hear their son or daughter shout 'Never sell your shoes for a promise of five pigs!' suddenly and clearly, only to resume the sort of gibberish one normally expects from a child a moment later. Over time, about ten to twenty of these sayings became so universally applauded for their sense that they were renamed "The Astronomers' Lectures" and they went a little something like this:

1\. When encountering a strange creature or person upon the road, do not eat anything they offer you. Unless you wish to die, in which case, that's fine.

2\. If found alone on a moonlit night, lighting a fire will only draw wolves to your door. There isn't any reason to light a fire when you have perfectly good moonlight anyway.

3\. Vampires, Selkies, and Sirens are all tricksters and deserve to have their knees poked. Preferably by angry gnomes. Or seagulls. Seagulls work too.

4\. No one likes a negative ninny. Not even Banshees.

5\. Do not, for the love of the gods, fall in love with your own reflection because that never ends well.

6\. Hearing voices is not a good sign. Seeing things is also not a good sign. Unless the voices and things actually do exist, in which case, carry on.

7\. Planets are pointless. They're too round and flat to be of any real use so it's best to pretend they're not there.

8\. If you are given a cursed object, throw it up into the air and chuck it at the nearest passerby. Let them deal with it.

And so on and so forth.

These snippets of good advice were all broken by a single astronomer in the year 1432 of the Emerald Star, though no one knows what exactly happened to her because she seems to have died in at least forty different ways, according to the legends.

More recently, there was another astronomer who unknowingly broke at least three of the "Lectures" and subsequently had to go on a very tiring journey that ended in his punching a man in the face.

This is that astronomer's story.

* * *

When an astronomer dies and his life's works are shipped off to the nearest printing press for immediate revision, there is one more tradition of great importance.

After spending several days ensuring that every single ritual is carried out properly, the astronomer's apprentice must set the body on fire themselves. It is said that in the moment the flames engulf a master, his student will have a moment of prophetic clarity that will inspire their research for the rest of their lives. They then take their teacher's place as the local astronomer and everyone goes back to mind their own damned business, much to the relief of the grieving and heavily sleep-deprived apprentice-turned-master.

In a small corner of some kingdom or another, there was a small parish whose name eludes everyone because no one really cares enough to look through "The Astronomer's Handbook" to find out. It was a quiet town in the countryside, near the sea, and the astronomer who oversaw the region was named Celestino. He was a nice enough sort, the kind of man who goes into his profession because he thinks it suits his name, and his apprentice was a boy with black hair and brown eyes named Yuuri.

His hair and eye color weren't particularly important, but these details keep finding their way into the stories for some reason.

Now, normally, apprentices were acquired in a variety of ways. Students who were interested from the beginning would pester their would-be master until they gave in; parents would send away a particularly annoying child so it would be someone else's problem; or the master would pick their apprentice themselves.

Yuuri did not fit into any of these categories.

One day Celestino opened the door to his tower and Yuuri was lying on his doorstep, a small boy of about five years old wrapped in an animal skin that smelled like it hadn't been washed in much too long. His first thought was to shoo him away, but he took pity on the child and decided to take him in as his student.

Celestino greatly regretted that until the day he died.

This was because Yuuri, while an exceptionally bright academic, was, to put it bluntly, odd. To begin with, he excelled at all the sciences and at alchemic concoctions, but he could not for the life of him work out even the simplest fetching spell or mix together a magic potion. This was a great flaw in an astronomer.

Secondly, about two years after he was taken under the astronomer's wing, he began a bizarre habit of speaking to himself. Often.

At first Celestino thought he was merely muttering under his breath, the way every academic does when confronted with a particularly perplexing puzzle, but over time he came to realize that Yuuri was speaking _with_ someone, and someone who very clearly did not exist.

As the 'Astronomer's Lectures' so clearly stated, "Hearing voices is not a good sign."

Celestino decided to give the boy the benefit of a doubt, wondering if perhaps he was lonely and needed a companion. One day he set out into the forest and came back in the evening with a small, golden kitten in hand.

"What's that?" Yuuri asked curiously when he saw the small creature mewling in Celestino's arms.

"A cat spirit," his master explained, taking the kitten by the scruff of the neck and placing him on the experimentation table. The cat looked around, obviously bewildered at its surroundings.

"What makes it different from a regular cat?"

"Well, to begin with, it's not a cat," Celestino said, drawing a circle around the kitten with chalk. "It's actually the spirit of a child that died at the same time as a cat, and their souls mixed together to be reborn as this little thing."

"Then it's a baby?" Yuuri asked, watching his master add in the symbols to the outside of the circle.

"In a sense. It will grow, but it not at the pace of a normal living thing. After a few months it will decide what age suits it best and stay there until the end of its life. For now, however, it's just as stupid and helpless as a human child, and unfortunately not nearly as clever as a true kitten."

Yuuri nodded.

"And the circle?"

"A bonding ritual," the astronomer explained. "He's to be your familiar."

"Mine?" the boy asked, taken aback.

"You look like you need one," Celestino said flatly. He didn't bother to elaborate.

He finished tracing a series of complicated figures near the kitten's paws and stood back to admire his handiwork.

"There, that should do it," he said, satisfied. "Place your hands on the circle, Yuuri."

The boy did as he asked, feeling slightly foolish.

Celestino muttered an incantation and the circle began to glow, first a faint blue color, and then a pleasant sort of red, not unlike a beautiful mound of strawberry ice on a hot day.

"For the spell to work, you have to name it," he said suddenly. "It has to be based on your own name, or the bond won't take."

Yuuri blinked rapidly, trying to think of something, anything that would fit the little cat on the table.

He could have gone with 'Yuu', but that was confusing when spoken aloud. 'Ri' had a nice ring to it, though it didn't seem to suit the spirit. 'Uu' was plainly stupid.

So in the end he threw caution to the winds and just said whatever came to mind.

"Yurio."

The kitten suddenly sat alert, staring up at Yuuri with wide green eyes. It blinked once and meowed.

"It took," Celestino said, pleased. "When he's older he'll will be able to hold a human form and talk, so don't be startled if he suddenly starts commenting on things."

"Okay," Yuuri said, holding a hand out to the kitten.

It sniffed at his hand and licked his thumb, only to scratch furiously at him second later.

"Ow! What was that for?!" he cried, pulling his hand away. The kitten gave him a very pointed look that Yuuri clearly understood as 'Why did you think Yurio was a good name for a cat?!'

"I take it back," Celestino said, amused as he watched the exchange with a learned eye. "This one is _much_ more intelligent than a human child _or_ a kitten."

* * *

He had high hopes that the familiar would soon put an end to the invisible friend nonsense, but Celestino was sadly disappointed. Yuuri continued to speak with thin air, often laughing or arguing in such a way that it was clear he thought he was having a very real conversation. When Yurio was old enough to speak, Celestino beckoned to the cat and whispered to him.

"Can you see whatever it is Yuuri talks to?" he asked, concerned. If the familiar could see it, perhaps _Celestino_ was the one with a problem.

"Not in the least," the cat said drily, licking his paw nonchalantly. "There's nothing there."

Celestino felt a mixture of relief and disappointment at the familiar's words.

"I thought he would get rid of this silly habit if he had a familiar to speak with," he admitted.

Yurio raised a cat eyebrow incredulously. "He talks to me, sure. But he talks to Viktor too."

"Who?!"

"Viktor. That's the name of his delusion."

Celestino sunk into his chair, feeling drained.

"Dear gods, the boy really is mad."

"One hundred percent out of his mind," Yurio said, examining his claws lazily. "Now if you'll excuse me, Master Celestino, I have a mouse to catch for Yuuri's offering today."

* * *

Celestino spent the next sixteen years worrying about the future of his parish. By sacred law, an astronomer could not take on more than one apprentice, and an apprentice could not be dismissed while he still lived. Of course, that clause could be used to one's advantage, if one was the sort of heartless bastard to kill their student, but Celestino, unfortunately, was not. He was actually rather fond of Yuuri, and while his skill in magic remained absolutely useless, the boy's research in other disciplines was very clean and elegant.

He would have made a fantastic scribe, if anyone actually had any real use for scribes.

Nevertheless, Celestino went to his deathbed with uncertainty in his heart. An astronomer played many important roles for their parish; they were doctors, scholars, diviners, alchemists, magicians, and fairly good tap dancers, to sum up their impressive resumes. The villagers came to their astronomers for help and guidance, or, failing that, to at least hear what the weather would be like for the next week. Astronomers made for very accurate predictors of the weather.

Yuuri, however, would be unable to fulfill a number of those roles. He wouldn't be able to do magic or fortunetelling, and to top it off, he was mad as a hatter. Even in his twenties, long after he _finally_ stopped speaking to nothing, he insisted on the existence of the supposed person called Viktor, and he would tell fantastical stories about this man, who was supposedly as beautiful as the sea and ethereal as moonlight.

He was clearly a lost cause, but there was nothing Celestino could do about it. One day he tripped over a haphazard pitchfork and broke his neck, and that was the end of Master Celestino. Several days later, a very exhausted Yuuri set fire to the shroud over his master's body and proclaimed, in a very tired voice, that in the flames he could see a a link of black chains that looked like pieces of coral, but the entire village already knew he was insane and paid him no mind.

Thus at the age of 23, Yuuri became the master astronomer and inherited Celestino's title, tower, and his "Last Words," which were as follows and considered to be very good advice indeed:

 _Don't leave farming equipment lying around._

* * *

Not long after this otherwise uneventful succession, the Mad Astronomer accidentally came across a chest hidden in the cellar of the tower. Inside it he found several empty bottles that smelled suspiciously of sherry and an old animal skin that didn't really seem to belong there.

For one thing, it was rather smelly.

For another, it was of a strange consistency, soft but not like fur, and it was a silvery gray color.

When Yuuri pulled it from the chest, he was enveloped by a warm, nostalgic feeling.

 _Where have I seen this before?_ he thought, turning it over in his hands. It was about the size of a large cloak, and he had the sudden urge to throw it around his shoulders.

Yurio suddenly jumped on it.

"Where'd you find this?" he asked, pawing at it curiously. Despite being able to hold a human form, he much preferred life as a cat, though he would shift to his eternally 15 year old human glamour if Yuuri ever needed assistance that required opposable thumbs.

"Dunno. It was in Celestino's chest," he replied, still deep in thought. "Do you know what it is?"

"Looks like some kind of skin," Yurio replied dryly. Yuuri sighed.

"Thanks for the help," he said sarcastically. "I couldn't tell that by the smell alone."

"It kind of smells fishy," the cat added, wrinkling his nose.

"I know it's suspicious just by looking at-"

"No, I mean, it smells of fish," Yurio said, rolling his green eyes in exasperation. "It might be a Selkie's skin."

"A Selkie? You mean... like a seal in human form?"

"Sort of, but not really. Selkies _are_ seals. Sometimes they go up to the surface to frolic around, and they take their skins off so that its easier to walk around. They usually hide them after, because if a human takes their skin and keeps it hidden, the Selkie will be forced to follow them home and live with them. It's one of the most ancient and binding engagements in the world. The only thing that can break it is if the Selkie finds its skin and returns to the sea; if it never does, it will die alongside its human partner."

"You know a lot for a cat," Yuuri grinned.

"I know a lot because I'm your familiar and all you do is read all day. I'm surprised you didn't know this already."

"I've never been good at the magic side of astronomy."

"That I know."

Yuuri examined the skin again.

"So if this is a Selkie's skin... does that mean Celestino had a Selkie partner?"

"Don't be an idiot, you grew up in this tower, you would know better than anyone if Celestino had a secret wife or husband," Yurio scoffed.

"Then... whose is it?"

The cat shrugged.

"It's probably an old relic, the sad reminder of some poor Selkie that never managed to free themselves."

Yuuri grew pensive as he stared at the skin in his lap.

"Do Selkie skins have magic properties?" he finally asked.

"Were you not listening?" Yurio growled. "I _told_ you, they're the world's oldest engagement token. It's a spell that binds two people so tightly together that even curses wouldn't be able to tear them from each oth-"

He didn't get to finish his sentence because a moment later Yuuri swore loudly and jumped to his feet, still clutching the skin.

"That _bastard!"_ he shouted, hurrying up the circular staircase that hugged the tower walls. "That utterly dense son of a _bitch!"_

Yurio had no idea what was going on. The bond with his master allowed him to sense all sorts of things about Yuuri, but sometimes he couldn't keep up with the blatant insanity. This was clearly one of those times.

 _Whatever,_ the cat thought, stretching out in front of the fire and flicking his tail. _If it's important enough I'll fin-"_

"YURIO, GET UP HERE!" Yuuri screeched. The familiar huffed and very deliberately took his time climbing the stairs.

"What is it now?" he asked as he alighted on the kitchen landing, watching Yuuri leaf through a large tome.

"The Handbook!" he yelled excitedly. "It was in the Handbook all along and I never... _Gods_ I've been blind!" he cried.

"We already knew that. There's a reason you use spectacles, Yuuri."

"No, not that! UGH, JUST LISTEN!" He placed his finger on the page and began to read aloud. _"'Vampires, Selkies, and Sirens are all tricksters and deserve to have their knees poked. Preferably by angry gnomes. Or seagulls. Seagulls work too.'"_

He looked up at Yurio expectantly, as if his great discovery was the most obvious thing in the world, but his familiar was not impressed.

"Congratulations, you found one of the most common 'Lectures' in all the kingdom," he said sarcastically.

Yuuri groaned and ran his fingers through his long black hair in frustration.

"They're tricksters!" he said loudly. _"Tricksters!"_

"And?"

 _"And they all deserve to be poked in the knees by seagulls!_ This explains _everything!"_ he said tapping his foot in excitement. "Don't you see, Yurio?! I'm not mad! _I'm not mad!"_

"You are not making a very convincing case for yourself," he noted as Yuuri tied his hair back and feverishly flipped to the section of the handbook on Selkies.

"He was a Selkie all along! I have his skin!" he exclaimed, his eyes gleaming as he read.

A moment later his expression soured.

"I'm going to kill him if I ever get my hands on him. How dare he just vanish?! I have his _skin!_ He's mine!"

"I really have no idea what you're talking about, Yuuri," Yurio said cautiously. He was really starting to worry about his master's sanity.

"Viktor! He's my partner!" he exclaimed, slamming his hands on the table. "I don't know why but for some reason I was the only one who could see him... _Oh! Of course! The skin! The magic of the skin's contract made it so I could see him!"_

"Okaaaaayyy, but Selkies aren't invisible, you know..." Yurio said slowly, wondering if perhaps the astronomer in the next town over might know what to do for a madman.

"Well Viktor is, for some reason, and I'm going to find out why," Yuuri said as he leapt from the chair and began rummaging around one of the bookshelves. "Help me pack, we're leaving as soon as I find a map," he ordered.

"Leaving?! We can't leave! _You're the Master Astronomer!"_

"Nobody comes to see me anyway, they all think I'm insane," Yuuri said, waving his familiar's concerns away. "Let Phichit handle it, everyone is always raving about his potions as it is."

"Okay but Phichit is the astronomer for a completely different parish, and-"

" _Yurio! Quit talking and start packing! I have a fiance who needs finding!"_

* * *

 **Notes:**

 **Asterism** : A grouping of stars that isn't part of a true constellation.

Ahem, I present to you, my original AU, where Yuuri is an Astronomer, Viktor is a Selkie, and Yurio is a Furry. Yes, there's a point to this story, and I hope it's a fun one! I can write stuff that isn't suffering too! Thanks for reading, and I'd love to hear from you!


	2. The Marshes of Lacerta

Sometimes, when human beings get overexcited, they'll completely overlook the simplest things.

During the reign of the last Emperor of the Volans Dynasty, for example, there was a young palace guard who loved puppet theatre. No one understood his bizarre obsession, because in all honesty the puppets of those days were absolutely hideous. They moved by themselves and were made of all sorts of nasty materials like metal and oil and a horrendously inefficient invention called a _screw,_ which never seemed to stay in its place when it was required of it and would often get stuck when it shouldn't. It was so tedious that all sorts of handymen and women eventually formed an Anti-Screw Union and liberated the world from the clutches of this wicked object.

Their slogan, _"Don't Screw With Us!"_ continues to be a rallying cry for unjust working conditions in the handymen nations of the north. But we don't talk about _them._

In any case, this puppet-addled palace guard never missed a puppet show when it came into town, and he was always seated in the first row, marveling at the boring stories and awkward movements of these self-propelled monstrosities.

One fateful day, he was given the order to remember to lock the gates in the palace courtyard for the evening, lest the awful followers of the Reasonist movement get in and bother the prince before his deadly trials the next morning.

Nobody likes a Reasonist, and nobody wants to hear a tedious Reasonist lecture on _why_ things happen and _why_ the universe came into being and _why_ there must be causes for everything; most people are content to accept things as they are, and they know that the universe _can_ come into being without a reason, just as someone can decide to chuck a cursed amulet at you for no other reason than that you happened to be the nearest passerby. This school of thought, whose followers are aptly named the Wanderers, is called the Aimlessness Interpretation and frees everyone from a great deal of pointless self-introspection.

The guard, knowing full well the dangers the insidious Reasonists posed to the prince's physical and mental well-being, took his job very seriously. He was waiting dutifully outside the gates for the bell to chime the hour when he heard the sound of an organist in the distance, and he realized a puppet show had just come into town.

Swept up in the excitement, the guard immediately headed for the city square, forgetting to turn the key to the lock in his haste.

Unfortunately, some opportunistic Reasonists saw their chance and infiltrated the palace courtyard. They then poisoned the prince's mind with circular questions that led nowhere, muddling his thoughts and causing him to question his own existence. The next day, as he was supposed to be operating a catapult, he began wondering what the whole point of going through the trials was in the first place, and what launching boulders off a cliff had to do with ruling a country. He was so lost in his thoughts that he promptly tied the wrong rope to the machine, tripped over it, and accidentally launched himself off the cliff instead.

The Volans Dynasty thus lost their prince, and their ancestral rights to the Marshes of Lacerta, all because of an overeager palace guard with a creepy fascination for puppets.

Which leads us to one of the most famous and most sensible quotes from the _Last Words_ section of the _Astronomer's Handbook_ : _Never trust a person who unironically loves puppet theatre._

The quote right after it is equally wise: _If you don't know where you are going in the first place, a map is about as useful as a Reasonist._

* * *

Yuuri had absolutely no idea where he was going.

He knew that Viktor had to be out there _somewhere_ , though he couldn't guess where that might be, or how he would track down a person that only he could see or hear. Viktor had suddenly vanished around the time Yuuri turned eighteen, and all he had to go on was the fact that he was (almost) certain that the skin belonged to the beautiful, ethereal creature that had haunted his thoughts since he was a child.

If the skin _did_ belong to Viktor, then the Selkie had to be trapped somewhere on land, unable to return to Yuuri. If it didn't...

 _Well, it's not like I get much business anyway,_ he thought as he packed his telescope, several books on star-divination, an alchemic kit, and provisions for a few days. Last but not least, he carefully folded the skin up, pausing to press it to his nose for a moment.

"That's just disgusting," Yurio scoffed. He'd switched to his human form in order to help pack; like all cat spirits, he retained his tail, ears, and whiskers, but his body was that of an eternal 15 year old boy, blond and green eyed. He was short, but quite agile and useful when it came to helping carry things. He wasn't really useful for much else.

"Leave me alone," Yuuri said, his voice muffled. "It feels nice, okay?"

"What the hell feels nice about having an old moldy thing like that on your _face?_ It reeks!"

"I like it," Yuuri said defensively as he packed the skin at the bottom of his bag.

"You would," Yurio said drily, dropping a handful of documents on the table.

"Oh, don't forget the maps," Yuuri said, checking the scrolls.

"I can't believe we're doing this," Yurio grumbled as he picked out several maps from the collection. "This is a mad quest. _Mad._ Pointless. We're going to _die."_

"Don't be so negative, nothing is going to try to kill us."

But of course he was wrong.

You see, the thing about travel is that one often wanders into the most unexpected situations without meaning to. You would never wander into a troll's territory or get hit by a mysterious falling comet if you stayed at home like a sensible person, but of course people are idiots and they like _adventure._ Mostly this is because of some bizarre human instinct to snuff themselves out as a species as quickly as possible, though, in truth, the rest of the world wishes they would just hurry it up already. It's getting a little tiring.

And of course Yuuri, who was still, after all, a little mad, conveniently forgot the fact that maps are useless when one has no destination, which only doubled the danger.

Or tripled. Or was it quintupled...?

Well, whichever it was, we can all agree that mathematics is bullocks and a fantastic torture method, and it would be lovely if the examination for becoming an astronomer's apprentice omitted it entirely, though that would have resulted in the historian writing this account having actually fulfilled their lifelong dream to become a master astronomer and thus no one would be interested in telling this story.

Not that that would be a loss of any degree whatsoever. Historians are nearly as useless as scribes. And should be paid better.

But moving on.

"What is the _point_ of this?" Yurio complained, his handsome tail twitching in annoyance. "Even if there _is_ a person called Viktor out there-"

"There is."

"And even if this person _was_ the Selkie whose skin you have-"

"He is."

"And even if you _didn't_ imagine them and they really are invisible for some unfathomable reason-"

"I didn't and he is."

"Quit interrupting me," Yurio growled. "What exactly do you think you'll accomplish if you find them? You can't even light a fire using magic, how do you expect to make an invisible person visible?!"

"I don't know, but I'll figure it out," Yuuri said as he debated whether to bring his cauldron.

"And one other thing-"

"What?"

"Who the hell is going to carry all this junk?! You've never managed to cast a proper portability spell!"

"It shouldn't be that much to carry between the two of us," Yuuri said simply as he threw in the most recent edition of the _Astronomer's Handbook._

"The- _the two of us?!"_ Yurio sputtered. "NO! I AM NOT GOING OUT WITHOUT MY FUR. I AM PUTTING MY PAW DOWN."

"You're the familiar, I'm the master. You'll die if you don't come with me," Yuuri shrugged.

Yurio hissed angrily. "I knew I shouldn't have fallen for the stupid food trick as a kitten. I'll kill Celestino if I ever see him again."

Yuuri paused.

"Uh, Yurio... you _do_ know what it means to be dead, right?"

"I meant when I die, okay?!"

"That makes even less sense."

* * *

Less than an hour later, the master astronomer of -shire was seen leaving his tower with a short golden haired boy. They were both carrying packs and a few people wondered what mad adventure their astronomer was getting up to, but it was quickly forgotten and most people didn't even notice he was missing later. Everyone went to Phichit in the next town over for astronomical needs anyway.

Now, not far from Yuuri's parish, there was a swath of land to the east that was considered to be cursed. It was a gloomy, depressing sort of place, full of ominous looking trees, toxic swamps, and the worst kind of salespeople, the ones who have dead fish eyes and look downtrodden even if you do take pity on them and buy their useless banana slicers. The place was called the Marshes of Lacerta, and it was common sense to avoid them and take the long way around through the Forest of Blubbering, named so not because one ended up crying but because there were a lot of Banshees living there and the sound of their wailing got tiresome after a few minutes of walking through them.

Still, as the _Last Words_ state: Better to meet a Banshee or two than have to listen to the incessant sales pitch of a bad salesman. Especially the ones that sell utterly pointless things like insurance.

Unfortunately, remembering which road to take when at the crossroads between the Marshes and the Forest was trickier than just following a sign. This was because there _were_ no signs, and no roads either, much less a crossroad. A map would have been useful here, but then again, Yuuri had no particular destination in mind.

"Do not, for the love of the gods, make us go through the Marshes," Yurio said grumpily as they trekked up the hill. "That place is bloody awful."

"How would you know? You've never been there," Yuuri said as he looked over his map.

"I don't need to have been there to know common sense," Yurio said, narrowing his eyes. Sometimes his human could be very stubborn. "No one goes to the Marshes by choice. Ever since that Volans prince chucked himself off a cliff a few hundred years back, there've been nasty spells put on the land."

"Oh, you mean the ones the Princess of Circinus had commissioned?"

To summarize the long and tragic tale of the Prince of Volans and the Princess of Circinus, the two royals had been engaged their entire lives, but hated each other more than words could express. After many years of trying to break the engagement, they conspired to have an official break by having the prince undertake the Trials of Lacerta, a deadly test that expedited the tedious process of inheriting the Volans crown by a great deal. The idea was that if the prince could hurry up and become king, then no one would be forced to get married and the people of both kingdoms would leave the prince and princess in peace. Alone. Without an annoying spouse to wake up to every morning.

They really couldn't stand each other.

In any case, the prince failed his trials and died, which led to the much applauded persecution of the Reasonists and also to the Princess of Circinus becoming very angry.

She didn't care a whit about the prince, but she didn't necessarily want him to _die,_ so she ordered the royal astronomers to curse the land and make it uninhabitable, so as to prevent anyone else from accidentally killing themselves during a Trial. She then stayed a happy single woman for the rest of her life, overthrew her own government because she was tired of ruling, and had a brief but very famous love affair with a Nymph before she retired to teach young students of the Wanderer movement how to properly launch a Reasonist off a cliff. Many people were botching it in those days.

"Yes," Yurio said tiredly. "And if you remember, she was a very thorough planner and made it very difficult and dangerous to go into the Marshes for any reason."

"Salespeople manage to live there."

"Salespeople are soulless creatures from hell," Yurio reminded him. "They even have their own section in the _Handbook,_ they're hardly people at all."

"Well, don't worry, I don't have any plans of entering the Marshes," Yuuri said, adjusting his pack. "Viktor wouldn't go to such a dreary place anyway. He loves bright, fun things."

"He sounds like an idiot."

"Hey, I don't say awful things about _your_ fiance!"

"MAYBE BECAUSE I DON'T HAVE ONE, ESPECIALLY NOT AN IMAGINARY ONE WORTH DRAGGING MY MUCH SMARTER AND DESERVING FAMILIAR THROUGH THE WILDERNESS FOR."

"Viktor is _not_ imaginary! I told you already, the seagulls prov-"

But Yuuri had to stop because he suddenly realized that he couldn't take another step. He looked down to find himself ankle-deep in sludge that was quickly congealing and pulling him under at the same time.

"What does that even _mean?!"_ Yurio argued, not having seen what Yuuri had. "What do seagulls have to do with any-"

"Uh, Yurio..."

"I told you to stop interrupting me!"

" _Yurio."_

 _"WHAT?!"_

"I think we accidentally wandered into the Marshes."

"Huh?!"

He spun around, and then he noticed that Yuuri was sinking; his knees were already under.

"OH, JUST GREAT. WONDERFUL!" Yurio shrieked, dropping his pack. "HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO GET YOU OUT OF THERE?!"

"Uhm, maybe if you get a stick..."

"WHY ARE YOU SO CALM?! YOU'RE GOING TO DIE!"

"Well, if I die, you die too, so I guess it's not so scary, knowing there's company," Yuuri shrugged. "I'd rather not die before seeing Viktor though, so you'd better find a way to get me out quick."

 _"I hate you,"_ Yurio hissed, switching back to his faster cat form and hurrying off to find something to save Yuuri with.

* * *

 **Notes:**

Ok, NOW I'm off to Hyrule. See you when my hiatus is over! Enjoy!


End file.
